Omslagontwerp voor: Wendingen, Houtsnijdersnummer, 1919 1919

This is Richard Nicolaüs Roland Holst’s cover design for Wendingen in 1919, made with graphite and ink. You can tell Holst has really labored over this design, hasn't he? I imagine him with his brow furrowed, working and reworking it. I wonder what it was like to sit with this image, to see it develop over time, each mark building on the last. See the thin layers of graphite that give it a muted, ethereal feel? The almost ghostly figures surrounded by ripe fruit really have something of William Blake about them. I can imagine Holst thinking a lot about framing, about the relationship between inside and outside. There's a whole history of artists doing that, thinking about how the edges contain and define the space within. It reminds me of the way some painters, like Magritte, play with the idea of a painting within a painting. I can see how Holst fits into that tradition, always pushing at the boundaries of representation and meaning.